What is your favorite period in literature?

[Hunger Artist]

Of course this is an extremely difficult question to answer, however it is an equally interesting topic to discuss. So, what is your favorite period and why?

[halfmoon25]

OK, I'll get it started...but yes, it is an extremely difficult question to answer, which is why I am very reluctant to answer.

One of my favorite periods of literature would have to be the Anglo-Saxon/Middle Age Periods. I'm not entirely sure why. I think a large part of it has to do with the history of the time period; I love reading poems like "The Canterbury Tales" and being able to see how the literature is a reflection of the society of the time-period. I also just love the Medieval Period in general, so I'm sure that has something to do with it.

But what do I know? There are things that I like/dislike about every period. :)

[PeterL]

Post-apocalyptic literature will be much better than earlier literature, but you'll have to wait defore you'll be able to read it.

[JuniperWoolf]

I think I'm going to have to go with 20th century. Steinbeck, Lovecraft, Hemingway, Maugham, Orwell, Moore, Dahl, Conrad, Kafka, London, Vonnegut, almost all of my favorites lived and wrote then.

[loe]

19th and beginning of the 20th century (Balzac, Proust, Dostoyevsky, Thoreau, Kafka etc.)

[PoeticPassions]

Ah this is difficult, but I will have to go with an entire century here... so somewhere between 1860 to 1960... AS Juniper noted some of my favorites wrote during this time-- Dostoevsky (though he falls before this period, but B.K. was published in 1880), Tolstoy, Wilde, Nabokov, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Thomas Mann, Hesse, Kafka...

Though of course the early to mid 19th century really had some masterpieces... Frankenstein, Madame Bovary...

[Motherof8]

The Victorian Age in English literature is my favorite.

[Declan]

I would like to say today is my favourite period of literature because I prefer the living to the dead and today to yesterday. Aside from all the merits of the past, its defining demerit is that it's not today.

[stlukesguild]

I would have to go with the 19th century. Since I am enamored of poetry I can't think of a greater era: Blake, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, John Clare, late Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Hölderlin, Victor Hugo, Alphonse de Lamartine, Giacomo Leopardi, Mikhail Lermontov, Ugo Foscolo, Giosuè Carducci, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Novalis, Gérard de Nerval, Alexander Pushkin, Edgar Allen Poe, Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Stephane Mallarme, Théophile Gautier, Pierre Louÿs, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Browning, Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matthew Arnold, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Edward Lear, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Gustavo Adolfo, Bécquer Eduard Mörike early Yeats...

The period also includes many of my favorite writers of prose: Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, Theophile Gautier, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Dostoevsky, the Brontë sisters, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau, Herman Melville, John Ruskin, Lewis Carroll, William Wilkie Collins, William Morris, Sheridan Le Fanu, Ambrose Bierce, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alexandre Dumas, François-René de Chateaubriand, Alexis de Tocqueville, Zola, Balzac, Flaubert, J.K. Huysmans, Stendahl, Comte de Lautréamont, Heinrich Kleist, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Gogol, Checkov...

[Declan]

But you know, it shouldn't be all that hard to decide which is your favourite period in literature. All you need do is think of your favourite books and the time they were written in is your answer as to which is your favourite period. That's all the question amounts to, a much simpler question behind it: which is, which are, your favourite books? Now, that's not so hard to answer.

[Alexander III]

But you know, it shouldn't be all that hard to decide which is your favourite period in literature. All you need do is think of your favourite books and the time they were written in is your answer as to which is your favourite period. That's all the question amounts to, a much simpler question behind it: which is, which are, your favourite books? Now, that's not so hard to answer.

http://up353.siz.co.il/up2/nwhzyrttgmzz.png

[Hunger Artist]

@Stlukesguild: The nineteenth century was certainly a revolutionary period during which the philosophical ideals of the masses were continously challenged. The literature of that period signifies that transition. I really respect the strides of the nineteenth century.

[mortalterror]

I would have to go with the 19th century. Since I am enamored of poetry I can't think of a greater era: Blake, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, John Clare, late Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Hölderlin, Victor Hugo, Alphonse de Lamartine, Giacomo Leopardi, Mikhail Lermontov, Ugo Foscolo, Giosuè Carducci, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Novalis, Gérard de Nerval, Alexander Pushkin, Edgar Allen Poe, Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Stephane Mallarme, Théophile Gautier, Pierre Louÿs, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Browning, Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matthew Arnold, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Edward Lear, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Gustavo Adolfo, Bécquer Eduard Mörike early Yeats...

The period also includes many of my favorite writers of prose: Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, Theophile Gautier, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Dostoevsky, the Brontë sisters, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau, Herman Melville, John Ruskin, Lewis Carroll, William Wilkie Collins, William Morris, Sheridan Le Fanu, Ambrose Bierce, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alexandre Dumas, François-René de Chateaubriand, Alexis de Tocqueville, Zola, Balzac, Flaubert, J.K. Huysmans, Stendahl, Comte de Lautréamont, Heinrich Kleist, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Gogol, Checkov...

Ruben Dario, Jose Marti, Jose Hernandez, Machado de Assis, Ho Xuan Huong, Nguyen Du, Edmond Rostand, A.E. Housman, Knut Hamsun, Eca de Queiros, August Strindberg, Heinrik Ibsen, Mark Twain, Henry James, Guy De Maupassant, Gerard Manley Hopkins, James Thomson, George Eliot, Ivan Turgenev, Mirza Ghalib, Ivan Goncharov, Edward FitzGerald, Anthony Trollope, Nathanael Hawthorne, William Makepeace Thackeray, Longfellow, Dionysios Solomos, Janos Arany, Sandor Petofi, Hans Christian Andersen, Georg Buchner, Adam Mickiewicz, Taigu Ryokan, Alessandro Manzoni, James Fenimore Cooper, Sir Walter Scott, Kobayashi Issa, Mary Shelley, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, late Friedrich Schiller...

[kelby_lake]

But you know, it shouldn't be all that hard to decide which is your favourite period in literature. All you need do is think of your favourite books and the time they were written in is your answer as to which is your favourite period. That's all the question amounts to, a much simpler question behind it: which is, which are, your favourite books? Now, that's not so hard to answer.

That's not necessarily true. My favourite books are all from different periods of literature. Furthermore, I may enjoy these books as the exception to the period rather than because they are examples of that period's output. You must also take into account the author's skill. Is Thomas Hardy good because he wrote in the nineteenth century or was he just good?

For drama, I enjoy Shakespeare's plays and am tempted to base my choice of Elizabethan drama on the merits of Shakespeare alone. However, 20th century American Drama, particularly the period from 1930's to 1960's, has had a phenomenal output from a variety of authors, so that's my choice.

For poetry, I would choose the nineteenth century. I like its lyricism and romance. I also find it more comprehensible than a lot of modern poetry, which is ironic.

For novels, it becomes a little harder. Many of my favourite novels happen to fall into the nineteenth century, so I will choose that.

[Alexander III]

Ruben Dario, Jose Marti, Jose Hernandez, Machado de Assis, Ho Xuan Huong, Nguyen Du, Edmond Rostand, A.E. Housman, Knut Hamsun, Eca de Queiros, August Strindberg, Heinrik Ibsen, Mark Twain, Henry James, Guy De Maupassant, Gerard Manley Hopkins, James Thomson, George Eliot, Ivan Turgenev, Mirza Ghalib, Ivan Goncharov, Edward FitzGerald, Anthony Trollope, Nathanael Hawthorne, William Makepeace Thackeray, Longfellow, Dionysios Solomos, Janos Arany, Sandor Petofi, Hans Christian Andersen, Georg Buchner, Adam Mickiewicz, Taigu Ryokan, Alessandro Manzoni, James Fenimore Cooper, Sir Walter Scott, Kobayashi Issa, Mary Shelley, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, late Friedrich Schiller...

Congratulations, now that you have pulled it out, we all know that your literary e-penis is bigger than st.lukes'

[Declan]

Kelby, Hardy is just good. He describes lightening as an ink stroke on burnished tin. I don't grasp that question. No one ever wrote good because of a period. I don't get that.

I take your other points, though; my earlier post was hastily expressed. :-)

[Delta40]

My favourite period was when I was reading Jane Eyre. It's flow was hardly noticeable, so absorbed was I in the story of Jane and Mr Rochester. :biggrin5:

[Declan]

I think if you like churches and castles and mysterious, doomed love stories, and night-time, you're going to prefer a time when churches and castles were the buildings at the centre of town and city commerce, which isn't the 20th Century.

If you like snowy landscapes, maybe Russian literature of the 19th Century? If you're a sailor or fisherman, maybe you'll like Stevenson's 19th Century tales?

But I think the main thing is the type of story you like and the kind of writing it is - if it's psychological and poetic, or plainer to just keep the plot turning. It's the writing that's the main thing. If you like that, then all the different periods will be more or less likeable. The period is of secondary importance, just as the objects that surround a person and the way they dress are less important to us the more we get to know the person in order to arrive at a decision about how we feel about them.

It's the same with different nationalities. No one likes an Englishman because he's English. He'll like him because he's a good person who you click with. If he's English as well and you happen to like English culture - and you already like who the man is - all the better for you, you'll like him all the more.

In saying that, if the writing uses a lot of terms from the period you're unfamiliar with, that will make the story inaccessible. Stevenson I find can be a little like that when he talks about a boat. I don't even know what starboard means and I don't really want to know. I've looked up the meaning but forgotten, on previous occasions. I'm never on boats and have no incentive to remember what things mean on deck.

[kelby_lake]

Kelby, Hardy is just good. He describes lightening as an ink stroke on burnished tin. I don't grasp that question. No one ever wrote good because of a period. I don't get that.


My point was that a writer's talent is not dependant on the century they are writing in. It wouldn't matter if my favourite books were Hardy and Dickens- that doesn't mean that my favourite period of writing is the 19th century. My most-hated writers could be the Bronte sisters and Eliot. The question of favourite books is therefore separate from the question of favourite period of literature.

[kelby_lake]

In saying that, if the writing uses a lot of terms from the period you're unfamiliar with, that will make the story inaccessible. Stevenson I find can be a little like that when he talks about a boat. I don't even know what starboard means and I don't really want to know. I've looked up the meaning but forgotten, on previous occasions. I'm never on boats and have no incentive to remember what things mean on deck.

Starboard is just the right-hand side of the boat, isn't it? Besides, I doubt the enjoyment of the novel is constructed entirely on a knowledge of ships.

Loads of novels will contain some unfamiliar terms. I'm using a TV example here but what about all those medical dramas? They use lots of terms that we don't know. That doesn't make them "inaccessible".

To be honest, I've never found a book that is "inaccessible" purely because it had some terms in it that I was unfamiliar with.

[Declan]

Kelby, I like Stevenson. I said he can be a little like that. Good stories won't use a lot of unfamiliar terms, that's true. Stevenson doesn't overuse unfamiliar knowledge, as he is a first rate storyteller; I didn't want to suggest otherwise. Not many good stories are inaccessible, I would always agree with that.

I don't agree the medical dramas are the same as the book scenario. With attention, there's nothing in the medical dramas that aren't explained within the programme. You can see from what they're doing or the things they're holding, along with the fact that medical general knowledge is good and boat knowledge is next to zero.

From ER, I doubt there's ever a term they use that the audience doesn't know. I'd say the script editor didn't allow it, unless the term was familiar generally already or unless the context explained. I don't see how it would've become popular otherwise.

It sounds very technical because the dialogue is fast, but it's not technical at all, really, more than the layman is aware. It's cardiac this, pulmonary that, cranial, tibia - all that general stuff, along with the pictures because it's tele, and in a fast paced way, which makes the viewer thinks he's a skilled doctor to be keeping up - but it's all general stuff that the mind can easily follow. I must watch an episode again to see if it bears out what I'm saying. But I can't imagine how I would've enjoyed ER all those years ago in any other way.

[Declan]

Kelby, when you wondered whether was Hardy good because he wrote in the 19th Century or just because he was good...my answer was referring to that part of your point. I think his good writing has nothing to do with his time. Which I see from your last post is your own view anyhow.

[mortalterror]

Congratulations, now that you have pulled it out, we all know that your literary e-penis is bigger than st.lukes'

Well, glad we finally got that settled.

[stlukesguild]

Ummm... my goal wasn't to name every writer of the 20th century. Anyone can use Wikipedia if they're interested. I was simply suggesting that the century produced more of my favorite writers than any other era. I can't say that the majority of Mortal's list would be among my favorites, but I will admit that I would certainly include Nathaniel Hawthorne, Machado de Assis, August Strindberg, Heinrik Ibsen, Mark Twain, Henry James, Guy De Maupassant, Gerard Manley Hopkins... as well as William James, Edmond de Goncourt, and probably a few others.

[Alexander III]

Ummm... my goal wasn't to name every writer of the 20th century. Anyone can use Wikipedia if they're interested. I was simply suggesting that the century produced more of my favorite writers than any other era. I can't say that the majority of Mortal's list would be among my favorites, but I will admit that I would certainly include Nathaniel Hawthorne, Machado de Assis, August Strindberg, Heinrik Ibsen, Mark Twain, Henry James, Guy De Maupassant, Gerard Manley Hopkins... as well as William James, Edmond de Goncourt, and probably a few others.

I am glad you included D'Annunzio in your previous list, that guy is one of the finest writers my motherland has ever produced, and yet outside of Italy he is virtually unknown, when at the very least he is an equal to Wilde.

[Desolation]

The 20th Century is what interests me the most, and it was easy to choose because a good 9/10 of what I've read in my limited time in literature has come from the 20th Century (I could probably use to diversify a bit, but I like what I like). Slightly more specifically, the period of about the 20's to the 70's.

In this 50 year time-span, there's James Joyce, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein, TS Elliot, Marcel Proust, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Samuel Beckett, Flann O'Brien, Italo Svevo, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Nathanael West, Sylvia Plath, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Dylan Thomas, William Carlos Williams, William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, and Jack Kerouac. That's pretty phenomenal in my mind. I could spend a lifetime studying just a handful of those figures.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Ummmmmmmm, mortalterror likes making lists. It's what he does. You guys haven't noticed that?

I'll throw my hat in with the majority, here. I'm a fan of the 19-20th centuries, though I've enjoyed work from each century I've read, though I can't say I've read something from all of them. My favorite periods are Romantic and Modern, post-modernism isn't bad, and Victorian is okay, but it's definitely at the bottom of the list. I do like the American stuff being written during the Victorian era, though, like Moby Dicl, my favorite novel.

[manicpanic]

I really like early/mid-20th century American literature--so many excellent female authors around this time like Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, and Flannery O'Connor.

[KCurtis]

My favourite period was when I was reading Jane Eyre. It's flow was hardly noticeable, so absorbed was I in the story of Jane and Mr Rochester. :biggrin5:

I agree!!! I loved how it was written.